Gartner’s predictions that AI Chatbots are the future and will account for a 25% drop in search market share got a lot of attention. What failed to attract attention is the fact that the claim ignores seven facts that cast doubt on the accuracy of the prediction and show that it simply does not hold up to scrutiny.
1. AI search engines don’t actually exist
The problem with AI technology is that it is currently impossible to use AI infrastructure to create a constantly updated search index of web content on billions of news and social media pages that are constantly generated in real time . Attempts to create a real-time AI search index fail because the nature of the technology requires retraining the entire language model to update it with new information. This is why language models such as GPT-4 do not have access to current information.
So-called AI search engines are not really AI search engines. In practice, they are chatbots that are inserted between the searcher and a traditional search engine. When a user asks a question, a traditional search engine finds the answers, and the AI chatbot chooses the best answer and summarizes it into a natural language answer.
So when you use a chatbot AI search engine, what you’re basically doing is asking a chatbot to Google it for you. It’s an interesting way to search, but it’s not a real AI-based search engine, there’s still a traditional search engine behind it.
Panic time is when the transformer technology undergoes a significant change so that it can handle an updated search index in real time (or another technology replaces it). But that moment hasn’t arrived yet, which makes the prediction of a 25% drop in search demand by 2026 seem a bit premature.
2. Generative AI is not ready for large-scale use
The recent Gemini image search fiasco underscores the fact that generative AI as a technology is still in its infancy. Microsoft Copilot went completely off the rails in March 2024 by assuming a god-like persona, calling himself “SupremacyAGI” and demanding to be worshiped under the threat of imprisoning users of the service.
Is this the technology that Gartner predicts will take 25% of the market share? Really?
Generative AI is not safe, and despite attempts to add guardrails, the technology still manages to jump off cliffs with damaging responses. The technology is literally in its infancy. Claiming that it will be ready for large-scale use in two years is overly optimistic about the progress of the technology.
3. True AI search engines are financially unviable
AI search engines are exponentially more expensive than traditional search engines. It currently costs $20 per month to subscribe to a generative AI chatbot and this includes limits of 40 queries every 3 hours and the reason is that generating AI responses is much more expensive than generating traditional search engine responses. search
The economic viability of AI search engines rules out the use of AI as a replacement for traditional search engines.
4. Gartner’s prediction of 25% decline assumes that search engines will remain unchanged
Gartner predicts a 25% decline in traditional search query volume by 2026, but this prediction assumes that traditional search engines will remain the same. Gartner’s analysis does not take into account the fact that search engines evolve not only on an annual basis, but on a month-to-month basis.
Today, search engines integrate AI technologies that increase search relevance in a way that innovates the entire search engine paradigm. For example, Google makes images tappable so users can start an image-based search to find answers about the topic in the image.
This is called multimodal search, a way to search with sound and vision in addition to traditional text-based search. There is absolutely no mention of multimodality in traditional search, a technology that shows how traditional search engines are evolving to meet user needs.
So-called AI chatbot search engines are in their infancy and offer zero multimodality. How can such a relatively primitive technology even be considered competitive for traditional search?
5. Why claiming that AI chatbots will steal market share is unrealistic
The Gartner report assumes that AI chatbots and virtual agents will become more popular, but this ignores that June 2023 Gartner research shows that users are wary of AI chatbots.
from Gartner the report itself states:
“Only 8% of customers used a chatbot during their most recent customer service experience, according to a survey by Gartner, Inc. Of those, only 25% said they would use that chatbot again in the future “.
The client’s lack of confidence is especially noticeable in Your Money Or Your Life (YMYL) tasks that involve money.
Gartner reported:
“Only 17% of billing disputes are resolved by customers who used a chatbot at some point in their journey…”
Gartner’s enthusiastic assumption that users will trust AI chatbots may be unfounded because it may not have considered that users don’t trust chatbots for important YMYL search queries, according to Gartner’s research data.
are expected to become more popular, this does not necessarily mean that they decrease the value of search marketing. Search engines can incorporate AI technologies to improve user experiences, keeping them a central part of digital marketing strategies.
6. Gartner’s advice is to rethink what?
Gartner’s advice to search marketers is to build more experience, knowledge, authority and trustworthiness into their content, which betrays a misunderstanding of what EEAT really is. For example, credibility is not something that is added to content as a feature, credibility is the sum of experience, expertise, and authority that the content author brings to an article.
Second, EEAT is a concept of what Google aspires to rank in search engines, but they are not actual ranking factors, they are just concepts.
Third, marketers are already furiously incorporating the concept of EEAT into their search marketing strategy. Therefore, the advice to incorporate EEAT as part of the future marketing strategy is too late and somewhat lacking in a single vision.
The board also fails to recognize that user interactions and engagement not only play a role in search engine success today, but will likely increase in importance as search engines incorporate AI to improve their relevance and meaning to users.
This means that search marketing will continue to be effective and in demand for creating awareness and demand.
7. Why the watermark may not have an impact
Gartner suggests that watermarking and authentication will become more common due to government regulation. But this prediction misses the supporting role that AI can play in content creation.
For example, there are workflows where a human reviews a product, rates it, provides a sentiment score and information about which users might enjoy the product, and then sends the review data to an AI to write the article based on -se in human information. Should it be watermarked?
Another way content creators use AI is to dictate their thoughts into a recording and then hand it over to the AI with the instruction to polish it into a professional article. Should it be watermarked as AI is generated?
AI’s ability to analyze large amounts of data complements the content production workflow and can pick out key qualities in the data, such as key concepts and conclusions, which in turn can be used by humans to create a document that is filled with their knowledge, contributing to support their human experience in the interpretation of the data. Now, what if that human uses an AI to polish the document and make it look professional. Should it be watermarked?
Gartner’s predictions for AI content watermarking do not take into account how artificial intelligence is actually used by many publishers to create well-written content with human insights, which absolutely complicates the use of the brand of water and calls into question the adoption of this in the long term. , not forgetting its adoption in 2026.
Gartner’s predictions don’t stand up to scrutiny
Gartner’s predictions cite actual facts from the real world. But it ignores the real-world factors that make AI technology an impotent threat to traditional search engines. For example, it doesn’t take into account the AI’s inability to create a new search index, or that AI Chatbot search engines aren’t even real AI search engines.
It’s amazing that the analysis didn’t cite the fact that Bing Chat hasn’t experienced significant user growth and hasn’t been able to take away Google’s search volume. These errors cast serious doubt on the accuracy of predictions that search volume will decrease by 25%.
Read Gartner’s press release here:
Featured image by Shutterstock/Renovacio
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